Valve will unveil a virtual reality headset with full Steam support in January

In what seems like an inevitable step towards their all-in-one platform experience, Valve has announced they are working on their own virtual reality headset for gaming.

The past few months have been an exciting demonstration of Valve deciding they are just going to take their football and go home, with the hopes that everyone who wants to play games will follow. The announcement of SteamOS, Steam Machines, and the Steam Controller was the result of years of frustration with stagnation in the gaming world coupled with a desire to give Windows 8 users a better alternative. It’s now clear that Valve is far from done with this trend, as they have announced their intent to reveal details about a new VR gaming headset built with Steam in mind.

The spark that was started by the Oculus Rift Kickstarter has manifested into an impressive flame, with developers from many different disciplines looking to find ways to make the technology useful. Even with no consumer product yet, Oculus Rift has become a popular name and something that Valve clearly thought was in need of competition. After working with the Oculus team and adding Rift support to several titles, Valve has decided they need to do their own thing.

Early next year in a talk at the Steam Dev Days event titled “What VR Could, Should, and Almost Certainly Will Be within Two Years,” Valve’s Mike Abrash will take some time to break down what they have done so far. The core of the discussion will be about how Steam overlays into this kind of hardware, as well as a look at the kinds of hardware they have in mind for the prototypes. As if simply existing in the same room as the people giving this talk wasn’t enough motivation to want to go, a few attendees will be randomly selected to try out the prototype following the talk.

While these prototypes are an exciting idea, it looks more like Valve is intending to compete with what comes after the first Oculus Rift hits shelves. While these two companies aren’t even close to being the only ones working on VR headsets for gaming, they are by far the most interesting.

The new John Carmack-infused Oculus Rift and the sheer force of will Valve is capable of should translate to some incredibly cool tech in the coming years for playing video games. All aboard, everyone. Things are about to get really interesting.